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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 7364925" data-attributes="member: 29398">To us, yes.  To the PCs, no - they're the reality the PCs have to operate in.The players aren't allowed to side-quest themselves?They can't, if they're never given the chance to...but they can, and sometimes will, if the chance is there.  Nothing wrong with that.It is unbelievably frustrating that you keep making this ridiculous claim that "there is no world around the PCs".  If there isn't, then what are the PCs operating in and-or interacting with in the fiction?  An endless empty void?Of course she should.  It's her job, as I've been saying the whole time.At the same time as my player-expressed thematic content and dramatic needs ("Dramatic needs"?  Really?) are being engaged in play, as a natural outgrowth of said engagement I also want to explore the game world my PC is in and at least see what's going by as my story goes along.  I want to know much more about the world than merely the trivialities affecting my PC right now, if for no other reason than this knowledge allows me to make better choices as a player/PC.  Who knows, maybe I'll completely chuck my original goals and beliefs if something more engaging comes along, or maybe I'll put them on hold and get back to them later.Not by your definition, perhaps.  But you're using a rather narrow definition of 'agency' here, which excludes the agency of choice within the fiction.Silently, no; but sometimes a hockey or politics debate will break out between one round and the next - it happens... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Yes, and "the rest of my life" is my expectation for how long any campaign I'm playing or DMing will potentially last.  If someone's trying to sell me on a campaign and says they only expect it'll last 6 months to a year I'll say why bother - by that point you should just nicely be getting started. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Nor does anyone, but define "uninteresting".  Just because you've put your character on a story path via its goals and beliefs doesn't (or certainly shouldn't) mean said character is locked into dealing with those and nothing else, nor does it mean those goals/beliefs cannot be changed or abandoned during the campaign as new information comes to light and you as PC learn more about the game world around you.How can you possibly conclude that anything involving a scene-jump framing such as either of those examples doesn't reduce choices?  Zero - which is how many choices the players/PCs have between one framed scene and the next in these examples - is always a reduction on the number they'd have had if any of the intervening scenery had been described; as the second you introduce said scenery you're also introducing a choice for the players/PCs as to what to do with it, if anything.And if some of the choices are or lead to red herrings, so be it.  Deny these options, and this 'scene framing' idea is every bit as much a railroad as the more conventional type about which so many have complained over the years.Don't have time right now to get to the other post. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Lanefan</blockquote>

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